Monday marked the final day of the National Gallery of Jamaica’s National Biennial 2012. It is a remarkable exhibit featuring Jamaican artists of a wide range of ages and political and social vantage points.

While all the work is arresting, it seems Ebony Patterson has garnered a bulk of the attention. With good reason. Miss Patterson is  an accomplished artist whose pieces address gender, politics, class and image. The title of this post, ‘Gangsters for Life’ refers to what is perhaps Miss Patterson’s best-known work, a piece that tackles the role of masculinity in Jamaican Dancehall. (Check out a piece on her here.)

Patterson is a graduate of Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts and Washington University of St. Louis and a multi-award winning artist and she is only 32.

Check out the Gallery’s blog here. It does a more eloquent job of explaining the art than I ever can, but suffice to say that I left the Gallery feeling introspective and a whole lot more hopeful. There is nothing like seeing pieces of people’s brains and imaginations manifest into concrete items. These are items that have never been elsewhere and will never be replicated anywhere or anytime else. It always amazes me, especially when an artists seems to have spent some time in your own head or has been able to assault you by creating a physical version of a lingering thought you’ve never quite been able to articulate.

In addition to Ebony Patterson’s work, I enjoyed the award-winning Dreaming Backwards from Jasmine Thomas-Girvan

and Leasho Johnson’s work, which I have no images of. Suffice it to say, I was uncomfortable in that satisfying way that prompts you to question the way you see things after seeing his work.

Nothing like a visit to a gallery to push your own boundaries just a little bit further out. Also to make you grateful for your five senses.